Polish Forest Mushroom Soup

Thursday, 7 September 2017

Forest Mushroom Soup from the debut cookbook 'Wild Honey and Rye' by Ren Behan. In this book we are invited to discover the very best of the new food of Poland with lighter healthier versions of traditional dishes and fresh seasonal fare served in contemporary ways.

Image credit - Yuki Sugiura, Pavilion Books

I'm delighted to be sharing a recipe today from yet another blogging colleague's newly published debut cookbook. Hot on the heels of Katherine Hackworthy's Veggie Desserts from which I shared a Strawberry & Spinich Swiss Roll, Ren Behan's book 'Wild Honey and Rye' hits bookshelves today. Ren is a British food writer of Polish descent who has blogged for the last six years at www.renbehan.com. Inspired by the food of her childhood and by the new wave of flavours to be found in the fashionable eateries and farmer’s markets of modern Poland she has compiled an evocative, mouth-watering collection of recipes, truly celebrating her heritage. To find out how her first cookbook came into being read The Story of Wild Honey and Rye on her blog.

The book itself is absolutely gorgeous to flick through, read and cook from with wonderful introductions and personal stories to accompany each chapter and recipe. It's divided into seven chapters which I've shared below along with a couple of my 'bookmarked to try' recipes from each. Hopefully this will give you a feel for the variety of it's contents. It kicks off with an Introduction and The Polish Pantry which provides advice on sourcing ingredients and what alternatives could be used.

My own knowledge and experience of Polish food is very limited. I've looked curiously at the Polish grocery shelves in the supermarkets and have eaten Bigos (Hunter's Stew) and Pierogi (the classic sweet or savoury dumplings) in a sadly short lived Polish Restaurant in Aberdeen. But that's pretty much the extent of it. The reality of what Ren shares is far from what you may expect of cuisine in a post communist country. It's certainly not solely vodka, cabbage and rib sticking stews and dumplings. It seems that the contemporary Polish food scene is striving at both street food, home cooking and Michelin star level. In addition to inspiring me to recreate her recipes at home, I've also been inspired by Ren to add a visit to Poland to my ever increasing travel bucket list.

Many of the recipes that immediately caught my eye seemed to contain mushrooms and the first one I chose to recreate was Forest Mushroom Soup. Alas my mushrooms came from the supermarket rather than the forest so did not have quite as intense a flavour or colour as the original version. I also used a vegetable stock cube as -shock horror - I never make my own stock. I absolutely adore pearl barley so cooked up 200g of this for 45 minutes which I stirred through at the end. The resulting soup was earthy, rich and with the addition of the barley a meal in itself. I shall definitely make it again. Particularity should I be lucky enough to stumble across a patch of Chanterelles in the coming weeks.

Ren says "My grandmother adored picking mushrooms and she carried the knowledge of identifying mushrooms with her throughout her life, from the forests of Poland to the forests of England and Wales, where she would look for prawdziwki, meaning ‘the true ones’, or borowiki, porcini mushrooms, as well as other edible fungi. Of course, you can buy all manner of wild mushrooms safely from local food markets these days, so I would probably encourage you to do that for this soup. For a meat-free version, leave the chicken out of the stock. You can serve this with cooked pearl barley (kasza) to make the traditional Polish soup, krupnik."

Your post has reminded me that it's been a really long time since I last had this soup! It is truly delicious and Ren's recipe sounds super tasty. I've always admired the brave people who trusted their knowledge of wild mushrooms enough to forage and cook what they'd picked (when I was a child every family in Poland had several mushroom experts!). I've always resorted to shop bought wild mushrooms. Thank you for bringing this delicious recipe to #CookBlogShare:)

Thank you so much Claire for cooking from Wild Honey and Rye - the soup looks truly delicious and I'm so pleased it's made you add Poland to your travel bucket list! Really enjoyed reading you post, thank you xx

This sounds absolutely glorious Claire, and I can just imagine how much flavour it must pack! I must admit that I know very little about Polish food, so will definitely be looking out for Ren's book, thanks for sharing :-) #CookBlogShareAngela x

Claire is a Scottish food and travel writer based in Aberdeen who has been blogging her edible adventures since 2012. A mum of two and wife of one, she is passionate about cooking from scratch, seasonality, food education and family-friendly recipes.